The fagots are sold by the hundred, and the price is usually $6 25 for that quantity.

CHAPTER XII.

OUR KITCHEN-GARDEN.

As I wish to make this little work a complete manual to the “farm of four acres,” I must insert a few remarks on the management of the kitchen-garden.  Ours consisted of an acre; and, large as our family was, we did not require more than half of it to supply us with vegetables, independent of potatoes.

We strongly advise any one who may have more garden than they may want for vegetables, to plant the surplus with potatoes.  Even if the “disease” does affect part of the crop, the gain will still be great, providing you keep animals to consume them; for they must indeed be bad if the pigs will not thrive on them when boiled.  Poultry, likewise, will eat them in preference to any other food.

We had something more than half an acre planted one year when the disease was very prevalent; the crop suffered from it to a considerable extent, but the yield was so large that we stored sufficient to supply the family from September till the end of April, and had enough of those but slightly affected to fatten four pigs, beside having a large bowlful boiled daily for the poultry.  The worst parts were always cut out before they were boiled, and neither pigs nor poultry were allowed to touch them raw.

It is much the best plan to consume all the potatoes you may grow, rather than save any of them for seed.  It will be but a slight additional expense to have fresh kinds sent from quite a different locality, and they will thrive better, and not be so liable to the disease.

They should always be dug before the slightest appearance of frost, and place on straw in a dry place, where they can be conveniently looked over once a fortnight, when any that show symptoms of decay should be removed and boiled at once for the pigs.  By this method very few will be wholly wasted; instead of eating potatoes you will eat pork, that is, if you have plenty of skim-milk.  I do not at all know how pigs would like them without they were mixed up with that fluid.

We have tried, with great success, planting them in rows alternately with other vegetables.  When they are all together, the haulms in wet seasons grow so rankly that they become matted together; and then, as the air is excluded from the roots, it renders them liable to disease.  We have tried cutting the haulm off to within a few inches of the ground; but this, the gardener said, proved detrimental to the roots.  We afterwards tried a row of potatoes, then cabbages, then carrots, and then again came the potatoes.  We once planted them between the currant and gooseberry bushes, but it was as bad, or worse, than when a quantity of them were by themselves; for when the trees made their midsummer shoots the leaves quite shut out air and light from the potatoes, and when dug they proved worse than any other portions of the crop.